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He is, too. But the Bruins are cheating better. And that’s a big reason why the Bruins beat the Maple Leafs 5-2 on Monday to take a 2-games-to-1 lead in their best-of-7 Stanley Cup Eastern Conference quarter-final.

“They’re the best team in the league at them (faceoffs),” said Bozak. “They’ve got the best guy in the league. (Patrice) Bergeron. It’s going to be hard to beat guys like that.

“Thought maybe they were cheating a little bit. So I tried to cheat. Your timing can be off by half a second. You’re going to have an off night. You’re not going to get away with mistakes in the circle with off-timing with the guys they have.

“I cheat, too. We all cheat. They were just cheating better.”

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Bozak was tossed from the circle a number of times. The fans got on the linesmen continually. The parade out of the circle didn’t stop.

Ultimately, it probably wasn’t a bad thing. Bozak had a horrible night in the faceoff circle, winning 12, losing 17. (Mikhail Grabovski was the best Leaf, winning 11, losing nine.)

The Bruins won 60 per cent of their draws. Bergeron won 12 of 20; Chris Kelly won 12 of 15; Rich Peverley won 10 of 11.

Leafs coach Randy Carlyle talked the matter over with the on-ice officials.

“From our guys’ perspective, there were some things going on out there in the faceoff circle they deemed, I hate to say fair, because if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying, that’s my theory on face-offs,” said Carlyle. “But we were not taking up the position we would normally get being the home team. Usually, it’s visitor down, home team down, puck down.

“Our guys felt there were things going on in the faceoff circle with our guys getting bounced unfairly.

“I asked the linesman what was going on, his explanation was he felt our guys were impeding on the circle.”

Neither Carlyle nor Bozak would go into specifics.

But the home team is supposed to put their sticks down last, and the Leafs were suggesting the Bruins were taking their time putting their sticks down. Bozak, in response, appeared to be taking too much of the circle with his blade and was getting tossed.

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BOSTON DEEP

The Maple Leafs are going to have to come to terms with a few issues if they’re going to put on a better performance in Game 4.

As the Leafs and Bruins were set to take to the Air Canada Centre ice today for practice to prepare for Game 4, it’s become obvious the Bruins have a number of things going for them,

It starts with depth: Their top two lines are loaded with talent and only one of them is scoring: Nathan Horton, David Krejci and Milan Lucic, for example, has combined for 19 points.

If the Bruins find a way to get their second line — Patrice Bergeron, Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand going, watch out. So far, of that group, only Marchand has a point.

Meanwhile, sure-fire hall of famer Jaromir Jagr is playing on the third line, which has dominated zone play with tremendous forechecking and producing offence as well.

“They’re a good team,” said Leafs goalie James Reimer. “They have a lot of depth. They have some really skilled young guys and some veterans there, too. We’re going to have to bring our A game.”

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POWER UP

If there’s a positive for the Leafs, it’s their power play. The Maple Leafs went 2-for-5 on the power play in Game 3 and they are now 4 for 12 on the power play in this post-season (33.3 per cent) although they allowed a short-handed goal on a weak pass from Phil Kessel to Dion Phaneuf.

It’s a small sample size to be sure, but the Leafs power play is rated second in the NHL behind the Pittsburgh Penguins.

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NET PRESENCE

Outside of faceoffs, there are a few other things the Leafs will have to work on for Game 4. One big one is getting in front of Tuukka Rask. The Leafs peppered Rask with 47 shots (the official total came down about two hours after the game). That’s the most shots the Leafs managed on a goalie all season. It’s the most shots the Bruins allowed.

Rask had a tendency to give up big rebounds — Ben Scrivens-like rebounds. But rarely was a Leaf forward there to capitalize. Phil Kessel did. But that was about it.

“I don’t think we had enough traffic or enough concentration of offensive zone time,” said Carlyle. “We didn’t have the flurries of two and three shots off a rebound.

“There were a lot of shots taken from the outside and that’s what teams do. You push things to the outside and we didn’t do a good enough job of getting inside.

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CONSIDER

Game 3 was the first of this series in which the team that scored first also won the game. . . . There have been four goals scored in the first two minutes of a period in the three games of this series with Toronto netting three and Boston one. . . . Adam McQuaid’s goal tonight was the fourth by a Boston defenceman of the 10 scored by the Bruins thus far this series.

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WHO’S HOT

For the Leafs: James van Riemsdyk (two goals, one assist) has a point in each of the three games . . . Jake Gardiner (one goal, one assists) has a point in each of the two games he’s played . . . Phil Kessel has scored a goal in his last two games.

For the Bruins: David Krejci had a goal and two assists tonight, giving him points in each game of this series (two goals, four assists) . . . Milan Lucic had three assists in Game 3, giving him assists in each game of this series . . . Nathan Horton had a goal and an assist in Game 3, giving him points in each game of this series with (three goals, one assist).

CROWD SOURCING

The Air Canada Centre crowd let its presence be known. Draped in Blue and White scarves, they chanted Go Leafs Go, Thank you Kessel, got on Tuukka Rask and Zdeno Chara. At least until the Bruins started putting the game away in the second period.

They were all — even the rich guys in the platinums — at their seats for the puck drop.

“The crowd was unbelievable,” said Cody Franson. “They’re going to be a big factor in us having success in this series. We need them more than ever.”

Said Tyler Bozak: “The atmosphere was awesome. It was fun to go out there and see how loud the fans were. They were unbelievable. Hopefully we can get one for them on Wednesday.”

Said Randy Carlyle: “I thought there was a tremendous amount of energy in the building. Specifically when you give up the first goal it sucks the air out of the building, but that didn’t happen here. It was very unfortunate we gave up the third goal, it was a 2-1 hockey game and we had the building going our way. There was a lot of energy and momentum going.”

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SUMMING IT UP: Randy Carlyle.

“We made some mistakes that ended up in our net. When you do that, it usually ends up you’re on the wrong side of the score. I’m not taking away from them that they didn’t earn it, but when you make mistakes with the puck that lead directly to Grade-A scoring chances and they score on it, those are tough ones. I thought our work ethic was really strong and we worked hard and we did a lot of good things, but our execution level and the mistakes we made aren’t going to allow us to win a hockey game playing like that.”

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